The Gray Phantom's Return

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Excerpt: ...very much mistaken, you dragged it out from behind those packing cases." He pointed to a corner of the room where several large boxes had been displaced. The shamefaced expression of a man caught in a clumsy lie mingled with the look of dread in Pinto's countenance. "What you driving at?" he demanded with a feeble show of bluster. The Phantom's mind worked quickly. In the last fifteen minutes his suspicions in regard to Pinto had become a certainty. The policeman's conduct left not a shred of doubt as to his guilt, but the evidence the law would require was still lacking. Pinto would 146 soon gather his wits and invent a more plausible explanation than the one he had just given, and on an issue of veracity between the Gray Phantom and an officer of the law, the latter would have all the advantages. The Phantom, swiftly appraising the situation, saw that his only hope lay in subtler tactics. Perhaps by adroitly working on the policeman's evident pusillanimity he could induce him to make a clean breast of it. "The game's up, Pinto," he said sternly. "You murdered Mrs. Trippe, just as you murdered Gage. Better come clean." A ghastly grin wrinkled the patrolman's face. "Think so, eh? You newspaper guys think you're pretty wise, don't you? Well, what proof have you got?" For answer the Phantom decided on a random thrust. He took a pencil and a sheet of paper from his pocket and, placing his pistol on a packing case, roughly sketched a ducal coronet. He held the design close to the patrolman's eyes. Pinto glanced at the sketch. With a hoarse cry he shrank back a step, but in a moment, by an exertion of will power, he had partly mastered his emotion. He guffawed loudly. "Looks like a crow's nest to me," he gibed. "You recognized it just the same, Pinto. Your face told me you did, so there's no use denying it. You're a member of the Duke's crew. You had orders to kill Gage, and you did. It was fairly clever, ...show more